


Vivisepulture

by ScaryScarecrows



Series: Gaslights [13]
Category: Batman: Gotham by Gaslight (2018)
Genre: Gen, He's baaaaaack, and that's why you look both ways before crossing the street, and yet this STILL fixes absolutely nothing, canon did it first don't give me that look, thank god for cheap 1890s coffins
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-10
Updated: 2018-07-10
Packaged: 2019-05-21 10:09:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,056
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14913399
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ScaryScarecrows/pseuds/ScaryScarecrows
Summary: Something’s moving in here with him, skittering along half-rotted boards. Things are moving outside, too. He can hear them burrowing.





	Vivisepulture

**Author's Note:**

> I Googled this word and was gifted with both the definition and a picture of a pie. (The definition, by the way, is ‘the art or practice of burying alive’. Uh, Google, the pie doesn’t make it better.)
> 
> That last bit is canon, I swear. Well. Adjusted for the time ‘n all, but still.
> 
> IMPORTANT PSA: between heavy construction in my area and the arrival of the rainy season (high winds, heavy rain, Thor-worthy lightning storms), my internet is sketchy. SO if I don't update/reply to e-mails/comments as usual, that's why. It's not that I don't love you, and I will catch up as soon as nature lets me. We should keep on schedule, this is just a heads-up.

Jason is awake.

He doesn’t remember waking up. Maybe he’s been awake for hours, or seconds. Could go either way.

The air around him is stale and heavy, difficult to force into his lungs, and at first he wonders if he’s been ill. He…everything’s so faint and hazy in his head, fever-fogged. Last thing he remembers is…is…

**Screaming laughter and the snapping of bone and the sound of a knife through raw meat God please I don’t wanna die I wanna go home please-**

The garish, white, twisted face flashes behind his eyelids and he tries to open them, only to find that they **are** open, and wherever he is is pitch black.

“Dick?” His throat doesn’t want to work. “Bruce?”

His words fall flat around his ears. The stale air grows heavier and he swallows, tries to stay calm, and lifts his hands from his chest. He gets maybe six inches away before they hit wood.

**No no please no-**

Something’s moving in here with him, skittering along half-rotted boards. Things are moving outside, too. He can hear them burrowing.

**Please-**

He’s gasping, he realizes, and he tries to stop because he doesn’t want to suffocate but he shouldn’t be here how is he here why didn’t they-

**Okay. Okay.**

He pushes against the wood. It doesn’t budge, but a few clumps of dirt fall onto him. The skittering noise near his ear intensifies and something with hairy legs scurries across his face. He smacks his hand against the planks trying to claw it off, but it’s gone before he can adjust himself to reach it.

He pushes at the wood again. More dirt, and this time something slimy and wiggly, falls in.

“Dick!” He scrambles for some kind of leverage and gets a splinter under his nail. “Alfred! Bruce, Dove, somebody, please!”

Another slimy wiggly thing falls in and hits the back of his tongue, making him choke and gag before it-

-goes down.

He can’t be sick, he can’t, he’ll choke on it and he’s not dying down here, he’s **not.**

He feels around for something, **anything** , and comes up with his belt buckle. It’ll do. Coffins are flimsy, he knows they are, he saw one fall off the back’a the cart once and it broke and there was a hand stickin’ outta the splinters-

**Why couldn’t that’ve been me I don’t belong down here somebody PLEASE-**

Something squirms in his throat and his stomach flips, forcing acid halfway up before he gulps it back down. The squirming stops immediately but now there’s just. Weight.

The buckle makes a satisfying **SCRAPE-SCRAPE** and wood chips join the dirt and insects. Unfortunately, he’s not expecting the lid to weaken as quick as it does and he barely has time to take one last breath before it, and the mud above him, come crashing down.

The mud’s slippery and nearly impossible to grip, slipping through his fingers and leaving him to flounder like a drowning man. Once or twice there’s stinging pain in his hands-bites? Splinters?-but he can hear the rain he can hear **air** just a few more feet come on-

He emerges in torn, muddy grass, coughing up mud and legs and half-chewed worms and he can **breathe**. His legs are still locked in the mud below but they can wait. They can wait.

He slumps forward, wet grass against his forehead, and gets three deep breaths in before he vomits. That does nothing to make him feel better, and it leaves him trembling and too weak to haul himself out the rest of the way.

No one’s here. It’s nighttime, and no one’s here, and he realizes, at last, that he shouldn’t have been able to move, let alone dig himself out. That had been a broken arm (lot of other broken things, too) that Joker gave him. But…but he’s here. He’s breathing. He can feel his heart pounding against…his…ribs…?

Stuck like this, in the grass, with his wet clothes clinging to his body, he can. Can **feel** something. He lifts a shaky, splinter-filled hand and presses it against his chest. A second later he rips it back like he’s been burned.

There’s a huge, raised scar that he **never** had and can’t explain. Hesitant prodding says it starts at his stomach and…and splits, goes up to the top of his shoulders.

**They cut me up?**

The implications of that hit him like a boot to the chest a second later.

**I was _dead_.**

There’s nothing left for him to vomit, but his body tries for it anyway, leaves him retching hard enough to bring tears, hot and thick, to his eyes.

By the time he’s stopped jerking, he’s shivering and very, very aware that he needs to get out of the rain, get somewhere safe and dry and figure out what’s happened to him. Dick. A-and Tim. He needs to find them, needs to get home. But first, he’s gotta get these splinters out.

He manages to heave himself out of the ground and as tempting as it is to just lie here in the grass, he stands up, staggering and swaying, and heads for the road.

His head’s swimming and he can barely walk. The rain just keeps falling, masking the road from view. All he can see, now, are big blurs-trees and the distant spikes that must be Gotham. Home. He’s gotta. Gotta get home, it’s freezing and there’s blood dripping from his hands, he can feel it. S’itchy an’ hot and he can feel it clinging to torn fingertips before letting go of his skin.

Home. Penguin. Penguin’ll get him home, the Manor’s on the other side’a the city. He’s just gotta get to midtown and he can get a ride, they’ll recognize him.

Wet grass turns to mud under his feet and a gust of wind whips under his jacket, clawing at his wet shirt and sending chills down his spine. S’cold. S’cold an’ he wants to be warm but can dead boys be warm? Can they?

There’s a noise. He turns around to see what that noise might be, and has time to see a horse coming up literally **right** behind him before-

“Good God-!”

The ground rushes up to meet him and then he knows no more.

THE END


End file.
